An extended review of Maura Dykstra, Uncertainty in the Empire of Routine: The Administrative Revolution of the Eighteenth-Century Qing State. (Harvard East Asian Monographs Series.) Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2022. xxxv, 262 pp. ISBN 978 0 674 27095 4.

Abstract

Abstract Maura Dykstra's 2022 monograph Uncertainty in the Empire of Routine: The Administrative Revolution of the Eighteenth-Century Qing State (Harvard Asia Center, 2022) has attracted controversy in the academic community. This paper analyses the book's use of documents from the Ba County Archive, held in the SIchuan Provincial Archive. While reviewing the monograph's arguments drawn from these materials, the paper also introduces the Ba Archives and the methodologies that may be employed to interpret them.